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This year the Collections Team will be performing a bio-inventory survey of Southern Ontario with Malaise Traps. We will be setting up 56 malaise traps in the Mixedwood Plains Ecozone. The BIObus will be at a few events this year. Come see us at the annual Rotary Forest Guelph Tree Planting on April 21st at Guelph Lake Conservation Area. We will also be participating again in Guelph Bug Day in late August!

The BIObus is the mobile field research vehicle of the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (CBG), located at the University of Guelph in south-western Ontario, Canada. Since 2008, the BIObus has been carrying researchers and students to biodiversity hotspots across North America to collect insects and other invertebrates. It has been to most Canadian provinces and several parts of the United States. Hundreds of thousands of specimens representing over 20,000 species have been collected. When the BIObus gets back to the laboratory in Guelph, samples are sorted, labeled, and tissue sampled. DNA barcodes are obtained through DNA sequencing. Any new species to the Barcode of Life library (BOLD) are photographed.

We spent 2017 sharing with you info about Canada’s biodiversity for Canada’s 150th anniversary. We hope you have enjoyed learning about how Canada’s biodiversity is unique and incredibly diverse! Please let us know what your favourite post was or if you learned something you never knew before. If you missed a post, you can find them all at biobus.ca/biodiversity150

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9 months agoby BIObus_CanadaIt’s time to pack up the Curculionids! Next week two of our team members will be heading to the Smithsonian to return over 1000 beetle specimens that have been barcoded! They will be bringing back over 1000 more including Dragonflies (Odonata), Nerve -winged insects (Neuroptera) and Wasps (Hymenoptera)!

8 months agoby BIObus_CanadaIt's #fascinatingfamilyfriday ! This week we are highlighting the #Ectobiidae , the largest family within the Cockroaches (Blattodea). This family contains some of the commonly found pest species, such as the German cockroach, Blattella germanica, and several notable species of wood cockroaches. This family contains a group of beetle-mimic cockroaches in the genus #Prosoplecta and #Areoloaria , which is are of the most specialized groups of cockroaches. The Prosoplecta species in this photo is a lady beetle ( #Coccinellidae ) mimic.Some of the other species in the genus are mimics of Jewel beetles ( #Buprestidae ). Image Source: goo.gl/etCnH6